Here's the short version; on December 21 a chemical company called Floridienne Chemie accidentally drops between 300 and 600 kg of zinc-chloride in the Dender, a river which runs both through Flanders and Wallonia.

What happens next is rather unbelievable but still....

As the origin of this environmental accident lies in the Walloon part of the country the local government instance there has the responsibility to warn the other instances down river, in this case the Flemish government.

The whole procedure for this type of crisis situation is known by all involved, it is written down and it is followed... It clearly states that a FAX (!) should be send to warn the other instances...!

And of course we all know how a fax works these days.... So in this specific scenario the warning fax never came through because of an electricity failure on the Flemish side.

Apart from the fact that both responsible environmental ministers, Philippe Henry (Ecolo) & Joke Schauvliege (CD&V) played a shameful and childish blame game for about a week, it is also incredible to find out that a crisis procedure is based on sending a fax !

Here are some tips in case they both take their "communications audit" serious enough this time:

• Never, ever rely on just one means of alert... Use a cascading system where you would use the phone first, SMS second, email next etc.... I would not even include a fax or, if needed, I would fax through the internet.
• Always use a control system - you need to be certain the message or alert arrived. By phone it is quite obvious but also with SMS and email you can get a response saying the message was delivered. Even better is to agree on a "confirm receipt" sign from the other side.
• Be prepared for electricity and/or internet failures - always have "runners", people who are able to physically carry a message to others, integrated into your plan.

Several governments, even smaller local entities, use well known industrial messaging systems which have already proven their effectiveness. Of course business continuity and crisis management is serious stuff and should be handled by certified professionals.. but there is no excuse these days not to use a standardised system.

At the same time, crisis preparedness is a state of mind and a "culture" and I am not so certain that even with the finest systems in place our federalised entities and their ministers would be able to manage another crisis.

We've seen it before - when the system works they suddenly don't understand the language spoken on the "other side". Another case for having civil servants who speak the 3 national languages, but that in itself is considered a "crisis prone" discussion in my little country.

At the end of the day in this specific story, the environment and the Belgian taxpayers have lost here, and that's a pity...

I guess some of us bloggers spend too much time on Twitter sending short updates all day and then feel completely "empty" when it comes down to real writing...

In this blogpost I wanted to share some experiences from the last month. One is the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner we hosted at my employer's new information center called Big Blue. The other is a trip I made to Serbia for a conference on social media and public relations.

Let's start with Serbia.

View from the Beograd FortressI was invited by Andrea Brbaklić, the regional coordinator of the EACD for the area. She's Director of Communications at Erste Bank and organised a great gathering of PR professionals and social media people in Beograd.

The evening before the event I was invited for dinner with some of the most influential Serbian social media professionals.

I met with Milan Obradovic,  Marko Jevtic, Dragan Varagic, Jelena Jovanovic, Nebojsa Radovic, Dejan Bizinger and Nikola Jovanovic... (@Miss_Cybernaut @eniac @bizinger @varagic @milanobradovic @markojevtic @peckopivo on Twitter).

We spoke about social media, the web and many other topics but what was rather obvious from the start is that we're all struggling with the same issues; transparency, ROI, measurement, ethics and the decline of the mainstream press.

The day after I had 2 interviews with reporters from the Serbian media and foudn that there was a rather big focus on social networks, mainly Facebook. I had the impression that social media for the enterprise was a very new story for them.

Again I found similarities with typical Belgian reporter questions; talking and asking questions much more about the tools than about the principles that guide them.

During the conference later that day I spoke about how Van Marcke Group approaches social media and how we try to integrate both the principles and the tools in out normal, day to day business operations.

The people I met during those 3 days were all very nice and enthousiast. There is a real buzz in Beograd and social live is booming. I saw some of the best designed restaurants and bars there. Really would love to go back one day.

And then the Brussels Girl Geek Dinner.

Girl Geeks at the Big Blue Information CenterFor those of you who do not know the concept, Girl Geeks define these evening as such: "Girl Geek Dinners are events for females who class themselves as girly and geeky. The events have a technical focus and are light hearted and fun."

Clo Willaerts who organises these evenings and I got in touch. I suggested we do one in Big Blue, our new CO2 neutral building in Zaventem.

I knew the topic of ecology and CO2 reduction could interest the Girl Geeks and that they could be interested in meeting up with my boss Caroline Van Marcke, administrator of the Van Marcke Group (@carodou on Twitter) and our guest speaker Serge de Gheldere, ambassador for Al Gore on Climate Change.

The feedback from the crowd was great. It was out first offline "social media outreach" but I do think that by bringing people together and having a transparent and direct talk about our industry we showed that ecology and business can (and should) go hand in hand without going the "green washing" way.

The most important thing about these events is the feedback you get and the feeling that social media, if used in a transparent way, can really create long-term relationships. Check out some of the pictures slideshows and the video I made.

That's it for this time... Hope I can find the time to be more regular over the next weeks. Have fun in the meantime, and don't forget to comment.